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Sources of law

Sources of law are the materials and processes out of which law is developed. In modern nation states, the sources of law come either from the written law or the unwritten law . Constitution, statutes, case law, and regulations issued by government agencies. Sources of law for public international law and religious law differ, however, from the primary law of individual countries. The natural law theory argues that some rules objectively existing in the nature also are source of law, while legal positivism argues that only the rules made by sovereignty can be the sources of law.

There are three main sources of law in the world. They are

  1. legislation (it includes constitution and statutes which are prepared by Parliament)
  2. case law or decisions of the higher court
  3. customary law or custom

But the basis of our law today is case law, a mass of judge-made decisions which lay down rules to be followed in future court cases.For many countries case law was the main form of law and it is still very important today.




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